Spreading misleading messages

David Lazarus

Published 4:00 am, Wednesday, November 3, 2004

Anyone watching the election returns on CNN Tuesday night couldn't help but hear from Americans for Balanced Energy Choices, a Virginia nonprofit that signed on as one of the primary sponsors of the network's political coverage.

The group's pitch was made in an ad featuring an eagle gasping and wheezing as it flies in 1970 through a sepia-colored sky. "Not a good day for flyin'," the eagle complains.

Cut to today. The eagle is now seen soaring against a deep-blue background. A female announcer says: "Thanks in part to clean coal technologies, our air quality has been improving. And by 2015, emissions from coal-based power plants will be 75 percent less than they were in 1970."

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"Very nice," the eagle says.

As should be apparent, Americans for Balanced Energy Choices is favorable toward coal as a fuel source. But who's behind the group, and what's their agenda?

The ad on CNN doesn't make that clear. Nor does the group's Web site.

Joe Lucas, a spokesman for Americans for Balanced Energy Choices, told me the ad represents "an opportunity for dialogue among America's community leaders. It's an opportunity to present both sides of the issue."

In reality, it's yet another example of major corporate players -- in this case, the coal industry -- propagandizing under the guise of what would appear to be a public-interest group.

It's a sophisticated ploy that's being used more and more by large companies to sway public opinion.

"There's a name for it -- Astroturf," said Gail Hillebrand, a senior attorney with Consumers Union in San Francisco. "It's when you try to make something look like a grassroots movement when it's not."

For ordinary citizens, this represents a new challenge.

"You want to know if it's an industry-sponsored message," Hillebrand said. "This helps you understand the validity of what you're hearing."

On its Web site, Americans for Balanced Energy Choices says only that "initial funding for this worthwhile project" was provided by "America's coal- based electricity industry."

It doesn't say that the coal industry -- which in reality has provided virtually all funding for the group since its establishment in 2000 -- contributed nearly $4 million to politicians in the 2000 election cycle, primarily Republicans.

Nor does it say that this year, President Bush is by far the leading recipient of coal-industry cash, raking in more than $250,000, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a watchdog organization.

Sen. John Kerry, by contrast, has received a meager $5,900 in coal money this year.

Bush was also the top recipient of coal contributions in 2000, pocketing more than $108,000, compared with Vice President Al Gore's $16,450.

Americans for Balanced Energy Choices, which bills itself as nonpartisan, also doesn't say in its ad or online that it receives logistical support, including staff members and other resources, from the Center for Energy and Economic Development, a coal-industry trade group.

The center has aggressively lobbied against limits on greenhouse-gas emissions, widely seen as a cause of global warming.

On its Web site, the center says it rejects "the theory of catastrophic global climate change" and takes credit for helping persuade Bush not to support the Kyoto Treaty on reducing emissions.

David Hamilton, director of global warming and energy programs for the Sierra Club in Washington, said no one should think that the eagle ad on CNN reflects grassroots, unbiased thinking.

"It's just another in a long line of energy industry-funded organizations that purport to be in the public interest," he said. "In this case, they're just providing bad information."

Not so, countered Lucas at Americans for Balanced Energy Choices. He said that what the group is trying to communicate is that if we can all agree electricity is a good thing, we need to accept that coal-fired power plants are part of the equation.

"The negative environmental messages out there may cause a lot of people to tune out," Lucas said. "Programs like ABEC are important because they show folks that we can have a dialogue about this and that there's a middle way."

Specifically, he said the industry wants people to think about so-called clean coal, which is an industry buzz term for technologies that allow dirty- as-ever coal to be burned with fewer deadly emissions.

However, the Sierra Club's Hamilton said these cleaner-burning technologies focus almost exclusively on toxins such as sulfur dioxide and mercury. They don't address the more contentious matter of carbon dioxide, believed to be the leading culprit for global warming.

The main technology the coal industry has advocated to cut carbon dioxide is a process called sequestering emissions. It involves pumping millions of tons of the gas into large holes in the ground.

As such, he said he has no idea how Americans for Balanced Energy Choices can claim in its ad that emissions from coal-fired power plants will be 75 percent below their 1970 levels by 2015.

Moreover, he said it's completely disingenuous for the industry to take credit for improved air quality.

The air we breathe is better, Hamilton said, because the coal industry was forced by the 1970 Clean Air Act to implement reforms. "They spent millions of dollars lobbying against it," he noted.

The eagle ad that played Tuesday night would have viewers believe that, together, we can make the world a better place.

It was just another piece of disinformation in this most disinformative of elections.

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